This is my quest to use Woman's Day magazine as a guide to living a better life, month to month, by incorporating as many of the articles, recipes, and advertising into my life as possible. My goal is to grow as a person, discover more about myself and others, and test my limits, boundaries, and abilities.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Holiday: White Chocolate Mocha Wreath

I am no Martha Stewart. When someone says "craft" images of 2nd grade VBS or Oriental Trading catalog manifest rather than origami, wood working, or anything that involves any level of skill or craftsmanship. I am a wordsmith--a lazy one that requires bouts of mania to produce anything reminiscent of brilliance.

But Woman's Day always has a craft. And I'll be darned if I don't venture outside my inability to produce something that doesn't look....bad. The holiday season is about hope and redemption so I started to work on my first wreath.

I do have to preface the rest of this blog, however, by saying I stopped by one of our fabulous, locally owned home decor stores this Friday night to discover in dismay that the owner--Stephanie Humphries--had also fashioned several of the same type of wreath I had planned to make this weekend. Stephanie is naturally talented in the art of crafts, to say the least. Her furniture pieces have been the subject of prior blogs and I thought to myself,"How do I go about writing a blog about my pitiful wreath when she has done such a fabulous job?"

I told myself to suck it up, make the wreath, and produce a giveaway that would rid myself of the results.

My first attempt of craft and I would like to call it,"Grounds for Holiday Spirit."

Materials

Two 200-count packs of 8 to 12 cup basket-style coffee filters

Red acrylic paint

small paint brush

12" Styrofoam wreath form

hot glue gun and glue sticks

ribbon scrap

1. Starting with a stack of about 25 coffee filters, paint the top edges of the filters. Gently blow on stack to separate them. Let dry. Repeat with rest of filters.

2. Fold one filter in half, then twist it at the middle to make a cone shape with the red edges on the outside. Repeat with rest of filters.

3. Starting from the center front of wreath form, glue on coffee filters (so that the red edge points toward you) tightly next to each other and at a uniform height in a row around the ring. Continue filling in rows toward the inside of the form, then in rows toward the outside of the form.

4. Loop a piece of scrap ribbon and glue it to the back of the wreath for hanging.